Young lives trapped inside the system

Natasha Wallace, Geesche Jacobsen -Apr 28, 2012

From the street, it looks like a typical jail. The metal perimeter fencing is ominously high and topped with giant rolls of razor wire. There are no guards but only eight people at a time are allowed into the secured foyer where there is a ''no guns'' sign on the wall.

Inside, however, Reiby Juvenile Justice Centre, dubbed ''the boys' home'' by indigenous inmates, is more like a 1970s boarding school.

The basic low-set brick units - which can house up to 60 offenders aged 10 to 16 for crimes ranging from theft to murder - look out to a large sporting field and a pool.

There is a permaculture garden, a chapel overlooking a large pond of koi fish, and a cafe where young offenders on a TAFE barista course nervously take our order when we visit.

Apart from the numbered plastic knives and the boys' impassive demeanour, the setting is overwhelmingly ordinary. But some of their stories are unthinkable.

Many have spent most of their teen birthdays locked inside the Campbelltown facility.

Each year, about 5000 young people have their first contact with the criminal justice system. For most, it will not be the last.

New long-term data, released exclusively to the Herald, shows that 54 per cent of juveniles will be reconvicted within 10 years and, on average, four times in that period.

The 10-year study, to be released on May 10 by the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, followed 4938 young offenders who had their first caution, conference or proven court appearance in 1999. It shows that 9.4 per cent ended up in custody.

A Herald investigation also shows an increase in assaults by juveniles of 20.4 per cent between 2001 and 2010. Domestic violence assault cases alone rose 167 per cent, according to the bureau's data. At the same time, all other juvenile crime rates were stable or had dropped, apart from breaking and entering (up 13 per cent) and malicious damage (up 47 per cent).

The high reoffending rate has raised serious questions about the effectiveness of NSW laws governing juvenile offenders. It is not unheard of for a child to come before the court on a weekly basis, says the head of Legal Aid's Children's Legal Service, Debra Maher.

At one time, the service's most frequent client was a 16-year-old girl with a mental illness, in care from a young age, who appeared in court about 100 times, largely for malicious damage and common assault while she was in care. Recently, a 10-year-old had 12 court appearances in two or three months for similar offences committed in care.

''We still do see the young person that only comes in once or twice, and then does not offend again. But often we see young people over and over again, mostly as part of the continuing cycle of disadvantage,'' Maher says.

Under the Young Offenders Act 1997, police are encouraged to divert young people away from court through warnings, cautions and Youth Justice Conferences, where victims and offenders come face-to-face and agree on how to respond to the crime.

Dr Don Weatherburn, the director of the bureau, says the system needs a ''complete overhaul'' because a ''hands off'' culture is not working.

Referrals to Youth Justice Conferencing have risen from 1517 in 2006-07 to 2134 in 2010-11.

Recent research surprised many by showing the scheme had been no more effective in reducing reoffending than if the juvenile had appeared in court. Nearly two-thirds reoffended - whether they were dealt with by the children's court or conferencing program, the study showed.

''The high recidivism rate among juvenile offenders is keeping crime rates higher than they would otherwise be,'' Weatherburn says.

The act is under review, along with other laws affecting juveniles, and a wide range of opinions has emerged as to its success.

The Reiby chaplain, Lee Bromley, who has been in the job for nine years, counsels the boys while they are inside and after they are released. Bromley says it is not uncommon to see children as young as 11 or 12 who are repeatedly back behind bars throughout their teens. And she says she has seen an increase in Apprehended Violence Orders taken out between family members.

''There is more, wider use of drugs and alcohol in families, so the home is not a safe place to be, so a lot of the boys will reoffend around their birthday or Christmas to come here,'' Bromley says.

''They'll go and steal a car around their birthday so they can come back here and have a birthday cake and a party and get a present … One boy, since he was 12, every year he's been doing that.''

Shayne Toussaint, a former Department of Community Services case worker for 10 years and now a Youth Justice Conference convener, attributes the increased rate of domestic violence cases to greater responsiveness by police and the community.

The AVOs are not necessarily in response to physical violence, she says. ''It's more about the fear, the intimidation, the control, the power that the young person has over the other people in the house, and often in the past, people haven't reported that because of guilt and shame.''

Often, says Legal Aid's Maher, parents call police looking for help. ''They don't get help, they get a prosecution. Often they want to pull out of it, but they can't … They say, 'We didn't want them charged, we wanted help.' ''

Some youth workers have blamed increased drug and alcohol use by teens for the increased AVO rate.

A recent Australian Institute of Criminology report shows that in NSW in 2010, 50 per cent of juveniles detained by police tested positive for drug use. This is among the highest recorded figures for juveniles since data collection commenced in 1999, it says.

The Law Society, in a recent submission to the review of the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Regulation, raised concerns about the overuse of AVOs by carers, saying children had even spent time in custody on breach of bail for refusing to eat dinner or go to bed, or for swearing.

Experts agree that factors such as drug abuse and a dysfunctional family put a young person at risk of reoffending unless these issues are addressed, but there is much less harmony on how laws should tackle reducing recidivism.

Weatherburn says a key gap in the Young Offenders Act is that it does not stipulate reducing reoffending, and that ''should be the main game in town''.

''The fundamental problem with restorative justice programs [Youth Justice Conferencing] is that they don't deal with the underlying problems of juvenile offending, problems such as impulsive behaviour, drug and alcohol abuse, poor parenting, poor school performance and the inability to get a job,'' Weatherburn says.

He argues that diversion often means that children miss out on court-ordered early intervention programs such as drug rehabilitation and counselling, and suggests they be brought before the court much earlier - for example, if they have received three warnings in a five-year period.

''It's not like I want to lock them up. I want them to get treatment but I certainly agree that we can't sit on our hands on the assumption that they will grow out of crime.''

NSW Police agree that reducing reoffending should be stipulated in the Young Offenders Act but say it helps to reduce the incidents when young people come in contact with the criminal justice system.

In their submission to the review, the service says: ''Diversion proceedings under the Young Offenders Act alone are unlikely to significantly reduce reoffending by young persons.''

Legal Aid NSW, the NSW Law Society and the lobby group Youth Justice Coalition do not believe that reducing reoffending should be an aim of the Act - one of the issues under review .

A criminologist at the University of NSW, Professor Eileen Baldry, says any intervention would be undermined if a child is pushed towards the criminal justice system too early.

''The evidence everywhere is that unless there are some very serious interventions to divert a young person that once a young person actually gets into juvenile justice it's extremely difficult to get them out of an offending pattern because … it's a criminal justice response,'' she says.

''The numbers [of young people in custody] have been going up. We're putting more kids into juvenile justice care in some form, and those kids will offend more.''

And the outgoing president of the children's court, Judge Mark Marien, says too many children are still being brought before the court.

''You can't drag kids before the courts, that only stigmatises the children. The whole focus of juvenile justice is on rehabilitation, not punishment. If you can rehabilitate kids without having to stigmatise them by commencing criminal proceedings in the court against them, [then] we should try to do that.''

Marien distinguishes between those who grow out of crime as they mature, which he says make up about 80 per cent of offenders. It is the ''life-course offenders'' - about 10 per cent of juvenile offenders, who commit about half of all crime by young people - who are of major concern.

Marien said research had shown detention was not a deterrent. ''The biggest risk factor for reoffending is if they have already been in custody.''

NSW has one of the highest rates of juveniles in detention - about three times the rate of Victoria - partly due to the strict NSW Bail Act keeping children in detention while they await a court outcome. Eventually, many of them receive non-custodial penalties when their case is finalised in court. A review of the Bail Act is expected to recommend relaxing juvenile bail laws.

The Premier, Barry O'Farrell, said this week that while NSW had the highest rate of reoffending in the country, he did not want to see juveniles who had committed minor crimes being locked up on remand only to become worse.

''What we don't [want to] see is them go in with low-level criminal skills and come out with high-level criminal skills that lead them onto a path that sees them have a life of crime,'' he said.

The Commissioner for Children and Young People, Megan Mitchell, says the current legislation is a ''complex amalgam'', with a welfare focus included in a justice system emphasising formal court processes and detention.

A better approach favours funding local services to address social and economic disadvantage, and work with the children before they offend. Ultimately, she argues, this front-end approach doesn't just improve lives; it saves money.

''This kind of early intervention and prevention is … not just a benefit to the individual … but also to the community because it will reduce crime and reoffending and produce productive citizens.''

At Reiby, the manager, Michael Vita, has spent the past 12 years trying to give boys a decent chance of getting off the criminal treadmill. That means ensuring they are are engaged in programs that will give them job and life skills - from problem solving to cooking to bricklaying.

Vita, a superintendent at Long Bay Jail for 21 years and a former manager of Villawood Detention Centre, oversaw the $23 million revamp of the centre in 2003 to a ''more humane standard'' which included demolishing the 18-bed dormitories and creating individual cells with a TV in an enclosed box and a small bathroom.

He says a lot of the young people are from regional NSW, so visiting hours are flexible to accommodate long trips by family. They are allowed seven phone calls a week.

He says the centre offers programs which teach children coping skills and how to recognise what it is that may lead them to reoffend.

''A lot of that has got to do with them returning to that same neighbourhood or environment and the same families,'' Vita says. ''We're trying to get these kids on the [intervention] programs while we've got them for a fixed period of time.

''I see the end result here in detention. You wouldn't want a kid to come into detention if you can help it … but if the judiciary deems it suitable that they come, we just don't want to be warehousing. While we've got them, we want to do something productive.''

The pre-release centre Waratah is the only one in the country outside a main razor wire compound, and runs day-release programs so up to 10 juveniles over 16 can do work such as working in local restaurants, painting women's refuges or planting trees at Taronga Zoo.

''[Reiby] is a detention centre, so it obviously looks like a detention centre, so you see barbed wire and razor wire … but it's not meant to be a place like a jail or an institution where the kids are warehoused, put in their rooms and then released back out into the community.''

Vita adds: ''We are here to do a job, to improve their lot so that when they get outside they are at less risk of reoffending.''